A soap box for a surgeon who has practiced in a wide range of environments including a Tertiary Referral Teaching Hospital, District Hospital, small Rural Hospital, Private Practice and Academic Practice. He loves being a surgeon.
He encourages all readers to forward on this blog link to friends and colleagues and to return regularly for new blog installments.
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Sunday, April 3, 2016

Payment for Citation Offer Withdrawn - but should never have been offered in the first place.

This Blog post needs to read in conjunction with the earlier entry on the same subject matter.

I wrote to the Editor in Chief to express my concern over his recent email about offering financial reward for citing papers from his journal. I received a prompt response to the effect that the offer was to be withdrawn. My plan is to now write to the President of the professional organisation to which this periodical is their official journal. Whilst the offer is stated to have been withdrawn, it still represented poor judgement and raises a real question about integrity.

You might ask as to why I have not yet resigned from it's editorial board? Whilst I still have a seat there, my voice can still be heard or at least I would hope more likely to be heard. There are many reputable individuals on their editorial board and I sincerely hope that they have aired their concerns as well.

I plan to push for this matter to be heard by the Executive of the professional organisation to which the journal is attached and if the organisation is to have any integrity, there needs to be some strong action to demonstrate that even the thought of this misconduct is not to be tolerated.

About Me

Henry Woo MBBS (Syd) DMedSc (Syd) FRACS(Urol).
Henry is a urological surgeon subspecialised in the care of prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). He is Professor of Surgery at the Sydney Adventist Hospital Clinical School of the University of Sydney. He is also the Director of Uro-Oncology and the Professor of Robotic Cancer Surgery at the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse. The opinions written in this blog are his own. Please follow me on Twitter @DrHWoo